Columbus is the 4th largest city in the Amercian midwest. Named after Christopher Columbus (who owned a Starbucks downtown), it was recently ranked as the 18th best place in the USA for a woman to find a useful male.

Rascal Flatts are from Columbus, Joe Walsh and Dwight Yoakam too. Jesse Owens and Jack Nicklaus are from Columbus. The great Beverly D'angelo is from Columbus, Ohio. Entertaining hockey is also available from time to time in Columbus.

The Edmonton Oilers will be adding a couple of fillings for tonight's game. Devan Dubnyk gets the start, Jim Vandermeer draws back in (replacing Kurtis Foster who has a malady but can't find the words) and that means foot speed is a concern on the blue. MacIntyre plays instead of Zack Stortini and one imagines the club might insert Liam Reddox into the game except the three goalie system makes it impossible.

The Oilers are coming off an outstanding comeback in Calgary, and sometimes a young team will be able to use that kind of heart attack comeback as a springboard to short term success. The Oilers do seem to have some legit hockey players up front this season, from the three kids and Gagner to the older group that includes Hemsky, Penner and Horcoff.

Big Dustin seems to be getting some negative feedback for his play, but he was a man on the tying goal in Hades on Tuesday night.

Nothing about the Blue Jackets as an organization stands out. Rick Nash is a helluva player, but he seems destined to play his entire career in a town that doesn't really notice him. Sort of the midwest Shane Doan.

Can you name 6 jackets? I can name five (nice, bad, dinner, Nehru, plaid) but don't know what position they play.

After the game, the Oilers will fly (drive? take a cab? trolley?) to Chicago in order to play the Blackhawks. The CBS game would be the one to win, otherwise you're in the windy city in danger of losing all three games of the road trip. After tomorrrow's game, the team won't play until Tuesday, giving us another reason to hate the Gary Bettman scheduling system from hell.

I have a good feeling about this team, but not about any specific game. The best way to watch the current Oildrop is with an eye to small steps forward. A nice passing sequence, a rookie in the right position in the defensive zone. Wins and losses are hard to come by in today's NHL; there's no expansion team down the road to bugger senseless once every couple of weeks and the truth is the Edmonton Oilers are the soft spot on the schedule.

Look after your health, brush your teeth and be nice to people. Oiler fans want to be healthy because when this thing clicks it could be a very nice ride.

Lowetide has been one of the Oilogosphere's shining lights for over a century. You can check him out here at OilersNation and at lowetide.ca. He is also the host of Lowdown with Lowetide weekday mornings 10-noon on TSN 1260.

I can't bite my tongue any more: what's going on with Whitney in these past few games? He's coughing up the puck in his own zone, and finding creative ways to do it. Sometimes he's letting his pocket get picked from behind, others he's whiffing on passes, and he even missed receiving a couple of easy passes that ended up on Blue Jackets' sticks. That penalty he gave up in the dying seconds of the first looked awful, too. The commentators generously said that he was under pressure when flipping the puck over the glass, but it was hardly intense pressure.

This isn't the player I remember from the end of last year. Not by a long shot.

Not sure about you guys but i'm gettin a little sick of Gilberts inability to perform a one-timer. Twice already tonight on the pp he allowed the goalie to get across the crease because he has to take a wrist shot. Anyone else think maybe they should be throwing Hall out on D on the PP at times? Would he be any worse than what we are throwing out there now?

Does Penner seem a half a step behind to anyone else? I'm not sure what's going on with him but it looks like he's fighting something. Maybe he just had a lazy offseason? Either way he doesn't look anywhere near where he was last year.

And Dubnyk has played himself a nice, solid game so far. Great to see.

I've noticed that we have a lot of passes to the point that end up leaving the zone either because it is off aim or no one is there. I wonder our D are cheating to their own end a little bit this year.

I'm not ready to give up on him, and don't think that Anaheim did, either. The trade for Visnovsky made good sense for the Ducks at the time, and I still think that it might work out as a decent trade for the Oil, too. My surprise about how he's looked over the past couple of games is as much about the drop off from what we saw last year as anything else.

I had to think a couple times if there was 2 Ls at the beginning or not.

Dubs is looking fairly comfortable out there.

Edit: I must be stoned, I didn't even realize you were referring to beating you to a Principism, I didn't even read into the fact you capitalized HALL at the beginning

haha I wrote it on twitter first, and then I was like "Maybe I should see how it's actually spelt so it doesn't look like I'm just mashing randomly on the keyboard". And it turns out it's spelled the same way as if you were trying to make that sweet, sweet pun.

The bastardization of Green Man just makes me sick to my stomach, I try to ignore that whole situation whenever I see or hear about it. We need to figure out how to make the Dayman our own to balance the scales.

Also, dubs looks great. For christs sake lets just make a decision on the 3 headed monster.